Remember in school there was always one kid who not only welcomed a scholastic challenge, he doted on it? John Barker was that kid. Academic stuff is my life, he says “This is what I do. It’s my ministry.”

As a biblical scholar and teacher, Br. John, 49, keeps attune to whatever is new about the oldest mechanically printed book in the world. He is completing his dissertation toward his Ph. D. in biblical studies from Boston College.

To many, working on a Ph. D, would be enough, but Br. John’s studies don’t stop there. He instructs several theology and biblical studies classes at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. Somehow he organizes his schedule to include research, field study, writing articles and being a local minister.

He recently wrote an article on the Garden of Eden for The Bible Today. He regularly contributes Week Day Homily Helps for Franciscan Media and has published articles on the gospels. He reads and speaks French, Hebrew, German, Spanish, and Greek. He also reads Latin. When there is a pocket of time, he preaches retreats and days of recollection.

He previously traveled to Israel, Greece and Turkey and he looks forward to taking a group of students back to Israel for six weeks in the fall.

To assure us it is not all work, he adds, “But I do enjoy reading murder mysteries.” Gardening is another of his interests. His preference would be more of a permanent place to plant because they rent at Blesses Giles friary. He also likes to cook and does a lot of that as do the other friars in the house. Br. John said in years back, he enjoyed playing the violin and creating stained glass.

John knows he’s lucky to be doing something he loves, something he does well. “It’s a tremendous blessing to do this and I am thrilled to able to do it,” says Br. John.

]]>http://www.stanthony.org/br-john-barker-ofm/feed/0Immigrants discover the Heart of Texashttp://www.stanthony.org/immigrants-discover-the-heart-of-texas/
http://www.stanthony.org/immigrants-discover-the-heart-of-texas/#commentsTue, 14 Jul 2015 14:50:05 +0000http://www.stanthony.org/?p=6153Continue reading →]]>“There is more money in
selling children than in trafficking”
~

Photos by Delcia Lopez

A tired but happy mom and her son.

Clutching a plastic bag and holding onto her toddler for dear life, the weary mother pushes open the glass door and steps inside, eyes trained on the floor. She looks up in surprise when first one, then another of the people standing nearby shouts, “Bienvenidos!” and begins to applaud. As more join in, the woman smiles shyly. Clearly, the last thing she expected was this wave of warmth and welcome. The scene is repeated again and again as immigrants walk off a minibus and into the parish hall of a Franciscan church in McAllen, Texas.

“I get chills when families come through. It’s very moving,” says Deb Boyce, one of the greeters. “When they come in, the first thing we do is applaud.” Their gesture is the response to a modern-day exodus that began last year in Central America. Fleeing a future that held no hope, families began to move north in great numbers. And the place where many of them landed, after journeys that were long and dangerous, was Sacred Heart Parish.

In the past 12 months more than 20,000 undocumented immigrants, most women and children, have passed through this building, now called the Humanitarian Respite Center. McAllen, at the southern tip of Texas near the Rio Grande, has become ground zero for a crisis that no one saw coming.

“What could we do?” says Pastor Tom Luczak, OFM, the friar who responded last June when the trickle of immigrants turned into a flood of biblical proportions. “This is what the Gospel says: ‘I was hungry and you gave me food.’” Here at Sacred Heart, “The Gospel has become very real.”

‘Positive energy’

The Respite Center, next door to the rectory, offers just what the name implies: a bit of rest and relief. Outside it’s reminiscent of M*A*S*H, with a bookmobile-sized shower unit parked next to a half-moon tent lined with cots. Inside the center are comfort stations surrounding dozens of racks and stacks of clothing. Folding tables with bins of baby supplies and hygiene essentials line the walls. A kiddie corral is every child’s dream, a cornucopia of pull toys, books, stuffed animals, trucks and dolls. Alongside the kitchen is a row of dining tables draped in pink tablecloths and topped with sparkly centerpieces. All of it is coordinated by Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, manager of the facility since Day 1.

Volunteer Alma Revesz

Fr. Tom Luczak, OFM

Much of it is maintained by volunteers like Alma Revesz, who loves the center and the people it serves. “I think I am an addict to this,” says Alma, a grandmother who works here almost every day. “It’s positive energy. It’s beautiful when the children hug you and say, ‘Thank you, lady, for what you do today.’ I feel Jesus hugging me. I can see his face in all these people.”

Tom often stops by to meet the families. “I try to come and ask all of them who they are, where they’re going,” he says. And when they leave, “I like to say goodbye.” Today he’s playing peek-a-boo with a toddler who ducks behind his laughing mama. After a brief exchange in Spanish, Tom announces, “His name is Anthony. They’re headed to Virginia,” where relatives will give them shelter.

Monitoring device

Another immigrant sits next to an electrical outlet, a cuff around his ankle plugged into the wall. Whatever the reason for coming, “All of them are here illegally,” Tom says. “The newest thing [since May 13] is that they’re starting to put these ankle bracelets on them to track them as they leave before they get to their court appearance” for a hearing on their status. Charging the device takes three hours a day – difficult for most, impossible for some. “It’s sad to see. The people come and they finally feel safe and now they’re being clamped with ankle bracelets like criminals.”

Fleeing violence

Their story has been beamed around the world by National Geographic, Chinese media and the BBC. Tom remembers the call that started it all. Last June he and three other friars who share the care of two local parishes were in Chicago for the chapter of their province, Assumption BVM. On the phone was Sr. Norma Pimentel, a member of the Missionaries of Jesus and Executive Director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley.

She asked, “Fr. Tom, can I borrow your parish hall for a couple of days?”, and explained the problem – a surge in the number of immigrants crossing the border at Reynosa, Mexico, where the Rio Grande narrows. In the beginning, Norma says, “There were a great number of children coming” by themselves. “The Border Patrol and the Office of Refugee Resettlement were not prepared to handle it. They started creating a lot of facilities for unaccompanied children.”

Immigrants hear a presentation by Sr. Norma Pimentel

Sr. Norma Pimentel, “There were a great number of children coming by themselves.”

Families were another matter. “The Border Patrol was packed with a thousand people at their processing facility and were only equipped to handle 300,” Norma says. To ease overcrowding, many were issued temporary papers and released “provisionally” pending a hearing. Confused and exhausted, they were left at the bus station to fend for themselves. “They didn’t know how to buy tickets,” says Deb. Guatemalans spoke indigenous languages no one understood.

Good Samaritans took them food and water. Catholic Charities stepped in, suggesting that a way station would help them get their bearings. A couple of blocks from the bus station, the parish hall at Sacred Heart was the perfect spot. “I had no idea how long this would be,” Norma says. But Tom told her, “Sister, you stay here until this ends.”

Br. Andre Lemay, OFM, with a recent arrival.

As Norma soon learned, the families sold everything, risked everything to escape extortion and brutality from gangs and drug cartels in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. Children were being kidnapped for gang recruitment, slave labor, the sex trade, and most terrifying of all, harvesting of their organs for transplants. “There is more money in selling children than in trafficking,” Norma says. One parent was threatened: “If you don’t give us your child I will kill him in 15 days.”

Pulling together

Taking only the clothes on their backs, they hired coyotes (smugglers) to get them here on foot, by bus, in the backs of big rigs, on top of trains. “A great number are lost in Mexico,” according to Norma. “Many people die without anyone knowing.” For Tom, “The saddest thing is people who get separated from their families” along the way. “Husbands have been killed. There have been many pregnant ladies. Babies have been born here. It must be so bad [where they came from], it’s worth taking the risk.”

The first guests were welcomed to the Respite Center on June 10, 2014. “There were 200 a day when it first started,” Tom says. “It was unorganized; nobody knew what was happening. Nobody knew the magnitude” of the problem. A former provincial minister, Tom is no stranger to crisis, but “Last summer was unbelievable.”

Initially, “It was 24 hours a day,” says Friar André LeMay, OFM, part of the parish team at Sacred Heart. “I said I couldn’t keep this up. People from all over the world were inundating the center.” Press briefings were held to accommodate national and international media. In the midst of this chaos, something miraculous happened.

Showers and sleeping accomodations

Clearing the table as guests finish their soup

Volunteers showed up from every corner of Hidalgo County and beyond. Doctors and nurses donated time to treat minor injuries and examine expectant mothers. High schools and colleges sent students to help. Jews, Muslims and Protestants pitched in. “The project has been supported by every religion in town,” Tom says. “It’s a wonderful example of how people of different faiths can work together.” The Salvation Army made chicken soup – and they’re still doing it. The City of McAllen offered transportation to and from buses and gave Sacred Heart free parking and locations for the meetings, parties and Quinceanera celebrations that had to be moved.

A year later, the media spotlight has shifted, but the immigrants keep coming – not only from Central America, but from Brazil, Cuba, Africa, India and the Ukraine. The Respite Center is apparently here to stay. “We’re looking at the possibility of building a parish hall for Sacred Heart” to replace the one they lost, says Norma.
Meanwhile, it’s business as usual.

Pilgrims and strangers

“We usually get a wave of people in the morning,” says Deb, who is Development and Communications Director for Catholic Charities. “Sometimes we don’t get notification of how many people are here until they show up.” With center director Eli Fernandez on vacation and a couple of regulars fighting strep throat, Deb is showing a new volunteer the ropes. “Be sure to stay with the family throughout the process,” she says. “This afternoon we have 75 coming in so we really need help. Ay-yay-yay!”

Volunteer Mayra Garza with a language “cheat sheet”

A volunteer helps a family find the right clothing sizes.

Two blocks away at the bus station Mayra Garza, a Sacred Heart parishioner hired by Catholic Charities, meets a group dropped off by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Dispirited, disoriented, they move in slow motion as though roused from sleep. A toddler too tired to stand hangs onto the belt of a mother holding a plastic sack in one hand and a manila envelope in the other. Nothing – not the ride, not the commotion – could wake the exhausted babies draped over shoulders.

In Spanish, Mayra explains the drill, then translates. “I asked them if they want to go eat and take a shower,” she says. One woman responds in Spanish, “Oh, thank God!” They enter the Respite Center to cheers and applause and are directed to folding chairs for an orientation from Norma. What she’s saying, according to Alma, is, “‘We’re gonna give you clothes. The volunteers are giving you their time just because they love you.’”

A mom and daughter wait in line at a bus station.

From the time they leave home, “It minimally takes two weeks, sometimes six weeks, two months” to get here, says Deb. “The journeys are horrific for them. They’ve been held in a border detention facility for two or three days” in a climate they describe as “an icebox”.

After the families are registered, volunteers lead them around the room, stopping at a table where Sylvia Cardenas, 79, folds diapers and dispenses baby essentials. “I’m an old registered nurse,” says Sylvia, a regular since the beginning. “I like helping people because that’s what nurses do.”

Next to her 38-year-old Amy McCoy assembles travel packs – combs, toothbrushes, toothpaste and deodorant – for the journeys to come. “Oh yes, this is what I want,” a guest tells her in Spanish. “I get to feel human again.” Amy, a Baptist from Central Texas, moved here after a mission trip. “A guy from my home church is from Guatemala. He said, ‘You don’t know what this means to the people you’re helping.’ This cemented that I’m where I’m supposed to be.”

Refreshed, renewed

Sr. Anita Jennissen offers a stuffed animal.

As families dine on chicken soup – a light meal is all they can handle – volunteers move among the racks, collecting shirts, shoes and pants in the sizes required. Immigrants will leave their well-worn clothing behind. “There’s a magical moment when they get a shower and clean clothes,” Tom says. “Their whole disposition changes.”

Revived by food, children systematically work their way through each box of toys, many leaving with a stuffed animal they can hug or use as a pillow on the next leg of their journey.

“When they arrive and when they go, they’re a different person,” says Mayra.

“With this little bit of time you change their minds, how they see the future,” says Alma. “They are more strong, a lot of them told me. A lady at the bus station said,
‘Thank you. I was feeling dead. I have my life again.’”

Alma dons a hairnet in the kitchen to assemble 24 bags of cheese sandwiches, road food for those departing tonight. Sending them off to an uncertain future, “I pray and ask God to take care of them because there is nothing else I can do.”

In time they may forget the pain of the past.

But they will always remember a parish hall where they were treated like family.

For information on volunteering or making a donation, call Deb Boyce at Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley at 956-292-5852; or e-mail her at: dboyce@cdob.org.

This story was originally published in the SJB NewsNotes July 9, 2015, written and edited by Toni Cashnelli.

I found the camera and I felt I owed St. Anthony the finder’s fee. I thank God too, that the magazine was there for me to read.

You do such good work. God bless each of you.

–Carolyn

Share your prayers with us and our online community at our Prayer Page. You can donate to St. Anthony Bread or any of our ministries at our Donation Page. We’d love to hear your St. Anthony story too. Use our Contact Page or Email: shrine@franciscan.org or Call Colleen Cushard at: 513-721-4700

Loving my father for who he is
~

“Sons and daughters talk of our fathers in terms of what they teach us and how they love us. Fathers and mothers seem like gods initially. The older I get, my dad becomes more human to me, a man I love for no other reason than who he is. I love, appreciate and thank God this Father’s Day for becoming my God, so I can better love, appreciate and thank my dad simply for himself and for being himself.”.

Br. Michael took his Solemn Vows last year and is currently studying at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago.

Their examples of love, strength, integrity, responsibility, and sacrifice can help us become who we are. As you reflect on your own father, we thought you might enjoy some of the comments we received from the friars about their own dads.

Click on the photos below to read their stories and see more photos.

Fr. Ric, “We had homing pigeons!”

Fr. Jim, “There was no violence in him.”

Fr. Murray’s poem Trout Streaming honors his father, Louis

Fr. Carl, “The trust he had in me inspired me to be trustworthy and responsible.”

St. Anthony found S.R. a long, happy marriage
as well as her much-cherished engagement ring
~

Dear Fathers,

Enclosed is a donation in the amount of one hundred dollars ($100.00) to St. Anthony Bread in thanks for a lost object being found. We had been out of town 300 miles from home where we stayed in a motel and shopped in a large department store. Upon arriving home I noticed that my engagement ring was not on my finger. We went through our luggage, the car, and the bags of items we had purchased several times. It was nowhere to be found.

The following morning I called the motel and the department store. The ring had not been turned in and I had little hope of its being found. Of course, all this time I had been praying almost non-stop to St. Anthony. One of the things the customer service person at the department store asked me as we were speaking the first time was if I believed in the Lord. I said, “Yes.” I think store policy probably discourages mentioning religion to customers, even in a indirect way, while the employee is working. Yet she did.

She called back the second day to tell me the ring had been found. I asked her if she knew who had found it or turned it in, she said, “No, it just turned up in my box this morning.” I couldn’t believe it! I don’t think it was just a coincidence that the customer service person was a believer and indirectly was saying I should pray for it to be found and that the next day it just appeared in her box. I think it was a miracle. In our final conversation she said that my prayers had been answered, and of course, I agreed, knowing that St. Anthony had heard my prayers.

We are celebrating our 61st anniversary this year, so it is a much-cherished ring. Our thanks to St. Anthony for his help in it being returned.

When I was 16 and just got my driver’s license, I was driving with my younger brother to a Red’s baseball game, and I had my first accident.

I was using my dad’s company car, and I hit the car in front of me from behind; clearly my fault. These were pre-cell phone days, so I told my brother to stay in the car while I found a pay phone to call home.

I was scared, embarrassed, afraid of possible consequences.

When Mom and Dad got there, they first made sure we were OK; I was affirmed for telling my brother to stay in the car, and Dad said that everyone can make a mistake, once.

The “once” was not an ultimatum never to make a mistake again, but an encouragement to be careful and responsible.

My father used to wear classy suits to work. He worked in the office (at the family business) and like his father and uncle, he wore business dress daily. He also drove a nice luxury car to work.

The Franciscan habit, 3 knotted cord, and sandals

Yet, as I grew up I saw all that change. He instead began to identify more with his employees who worked in the factory and were covered in wood dust all day. He changed his attire over time to “work clothes” and industry standard boots. And yes, he got a truck and ditched the luxury car.

I say all that to say this: I watched him change to physically identity with the regular everyday worker. I know his employees respect him for it. I think he’s happier and closer to them because of such. I think unconsciously that’s the same process I mimicked as I shed the weight of high class society and joined the friars minor.

Therefore, I wear my habit and sandals like my daddy wears his work clothes and boots.